Lois Banner and Noura Durkee were visiting scholars in the department of religion (through the Center for Humanities and Arts), as well as keynote speakers for Women’s History Month for the Women’s Studies Program, last week. They gave a joint lecture March 26, in which they discussed their separate “journeys towards Islam.” Some excerpts:
Banner: “Feminism was the shaping influence of my life--I would not be who I am without that. . . . And it was women’s studies that brought me to Islam. . . . There are many varieties of feminism, . . . and spiritual feminism felt right to me. I found much of feminist theory non-aesthetic, lacking ritual, lacking ceremony. . . . For a long time I was involved in the goddess movement. . . . The fact that god might be a being beyond gender seemed a foundational idea. . . . The rational male university only partially satisfied me. . . .”
Durkee: “I never thought of myself as a woman going toward Islam--I just thought of myself as a human being looking for truth [but with] the expression of the feminine voice. . . . In the religion of my childhood there were a lot of unanswered questions. . . . I tried all kinds of religions, and none of them seemed to suit. . . . There were very few strong models about how to take all the parts of you and put it together. . . .”
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